A peek inside.

Menu

I had one of my practical exams yesterday, Operating Systems. It went really well. My next practical is in 5 days, which naturally means I need to be studying at this moment instead of pouring away my incoherent thoughts on a vague blog post. In a months time my theory exams begin. I want to maximize productivity, prioritize my exams and make full use of this time to consume and regurgitate vast amounts of information. I haven’t done bad at all in past exams in the last 3 years, but an ambitious part of me wants to excel in the remaining part of my 4 year engineering course. I must improve my programming skills. Being ‘good’ is not enough, I want more. In any competitive environment I yearn to be in the top x% (x = rand() % ((rand() % 2 == 0) ? 5 : 10)) [That is C-lingo for x either being a number beteen 0-5 or 0-10 subject to randomness]. I need to start taking the GRE seriously. Its high time I start preparing for it because I’ve been postponing the same since the past 6 months now. I need to do well in my final year project. All of this will culminate in me either getting a good job, a good university for my masters, or both.(No, I don’t even want to consider ‘neither’ as an option)

And there is another part of me that wants to do a lot of other things too. I was supposed to watch the latest season of House of Cards, and the recently leaked episodes of Game of Thrones after getting done with my exams. But then I binged on both of them yesterday.(House of Cards was a slight dissapointment and Game of Thrones was alright.) I want to spend hours reading good books. I love reading essays and opinion pieces on the internet. I want to write blogs more often than I manage to. Often, wanderlust takes over and I want to pack up and travel far off to some distant locale. If I were to have no constraints I could spend entire days watching interesting films and contemplating on some good music. This part of me is probably concerned with the spiritualistic side of things? I don’t know what I’d call it and what purpose it actually serves but it does provide a bit of context to life. Both of these sides seem incomplete without the other.

So most of the times it boils down to a priority war between the two. Shouldn’t I be focusing on immediate matters that will help me achieve an amazing career? Or should I be focusing on digging into deeper meta issues like finding meaning in things, and trying to find a deeper sense of purpose (if at all there’s any such thing). Isn’t that what will actually lead to inner peace and thus a satisfactory life? This struggle between the ‘practical’ and the ‘spiritual’ is probably what defines my present and future. Arbitrary decisions (like writing a post at this moment) shape higher ambitions. Even though I want to be really good at what I’m doing, I want to indulge in everything else too. This ambiguity is what probably inhibits me from being even better at things I’m good at and ‘drags me down’, but I suppose it also makes me more complete. This often leads me to question my motivations.

If I ask myself why I want to perform so well, the answer is ‘I’m doing what I like, what I’m passionate about and I might as well leverage this asset to reach my highest potential. And why would I give up on this golden opportunity if the thing I’m so good at happens to be one of the most lucrative careers around?’. For the foreseable future good coding skills(coupled with a firm grasp on math) have immense value in a world that is slowly but steadily being automated, with programmers being the prime drivers of this change. So-called passion, coupled with ample monetary compensation is such a deadly combination to resist. Another part of it is that most people in one way or the other want to stand out from a crowd. We don’t want to be conspicuously different but we do not feel like completely blending in either. For some reason, being normal isn’t exciting. A lot of our actions can be traced to differentiating ourselves from the ‘herd’. So maybe that is why I want to be more than just ‘good’. And in order to stand out, you must be passionate and really awesome at something. It is a kind-of vicious personality cycle: You want to be different, you are passionate about X, you work hard on X, you stand out, repeat. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could do this for all your passions and blend all of them together? Maybe that is a silent hope. That someday all of these seemingly disparate blocks of life, which presently argue with each other for existence, might somehow connect to produce something nice.

As of now, I focus on the ‘real’ ambitions which seem to be higher in the priority chain and try balancing these with everything else. As I realize some of these, things may change completely or stay the same. I’m open to uncertainty which may steer the moments ahead towards unforeseen realizations. In the hope that life doesn’t become just another mundane experience, I carry on with mixed thoughts that veer towards the irresolute.

Its surprising that I’ve been blogging for more than two years and haven’t had a single blog post mention anything regarding movies. I wanted to write one since a while, but I couldn’t come up with any specific topic. I still don’t have one, so this might turn out to be a collection of vague musings about my perspectives on films and connected issues.

I love spending time watching, analyzing and exploring films. Whenever I’m not programming , I’ll often be listening to music, watching some movie or checking out some commentary/analysis about a film on the web. I find the experience to be so intriguing that at times(not too infrequent) I prefer enjoying an isolated movie session(s) than a social gathering with friends and family. Movies stimulate my mind and they’re really addictive! I feel a strong urge to watch one when I’m movie-free for a long time, maybe for more than a month or so. At such times , my mind seems utterly frustrated with a lack of (creative/artistic ?) stimulation.

This is surprising because my mind is definitely energized most of the times: The quantitative part with the usual programming stuff like algorithms, math-related ideas etc. And the other non-programming part of my mind is engaged due to my indulgence in reading articles as varied as ‘How the world economy is in a bad shape at present with the US and UK being the only countries with a promising growth output’ in ‘The Economist’ , to the philosophical and physical perspectives on existence in the ‘Nautilus’. I read a lot on the web. When I’m not doing anything in particular , I’ll be listening to some good tunes. On an average, I must be spending an hour or two every day on music. So I find it odd then that after all of this there still comes a moment in time when I’m left feeling agonized and irritated about a certain void in my mind. When this happens, I just need to conform to this urge and shift into film-mode. Until I get that good hit of a movie, everything else I do seems lack-luster.

That description might have sounded negative but I’m glad I have this obsession over films. It feels amazing at the end of a really good movie when you’re going through these various emotions, after-thoughts and ideas and pondering about the meaning and significance of it all. Its like getting a well-deserved high! I’m not a voracious book reader, but I’ve heard a lot of people describing books in a similar manner. But for me its a wholly different level of engrossment between the two. Maybe I haven’t read the right books yet that perfectly match my likes. Maybe I lack the imagination to conjure up an entire world that will stimulate my mind and command its full attention. Maybe I don’t have a good command over the language to enjoy the plot painlessly without referring a dictionary every few words! Another issue is that books require a long time to be set aside for them. The last book I read was ‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Hexley and I really liked it. Gave me a lot of things to ponder over. But reading that book was hard! It had so many difficult words that I felt frustrated at times to constantly look them up, which definitely affected my reading experience. Well, maybe if I keep at it , I’ll be able to enjoy books as much as movies after a few years. I’m certainly waiting for that moment. Until then, however, books will definitely not match the audio-visual and mental experience of watching an intelligent and deep film. There are very few things that provide such an experience in a short time span of a couple of hours.

So then comes the question of what are the kind of films I like? I don’t really have any specific set of genres that I love or hate. I liked the slow romantic comedy ‘Lost in Translation’ , and at the same time I loved Kubrick’s ultra-violent ‘A Clockwork Orange’. As long as they are unique, coherent , well thought out and well executed the nature of the story or the theme doesn’t matter. In fact I really like exploring different and esoteric themes. They provide a window into the unknown and stretch your imagination to new frontiers. Its interesting to see aspects of the world you didn’t even know existed. Its a different experience exploring the world from another’s point of view. Watching so many movies has had a definite influence on who I am as a person, my views and my morals. I feel I have a wider perspective on things and don’t really treat issues in a white or black manner. There are a whole lot of different shades to each and everything present and there is no right or wrong. Accepting this is far wiser than propagating and imposing a rigid world view.

But if I had to mention something specific, I’d say I like plots and themes that explore the psychological and philosophical aspects of the mind and life. Films that analyze the thought process of a person or a group of people. How those thoughts, opinions and emotions have an effect on the individual’s life and others around him for better or worse. Interactions between different clashing views. Quite a few films that I’ve seen recently center around these issues.

Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ is an amazing film that explores the life and mind of a young individual, Alex, who’s a part of an ultra-violent group of thugs that rob people, rape woman and indulge in other extreme forms of violence just for the heck of it! To get the kicks. The first half, where there is lots of explicit graphic content describing these activitites being performed, is quite disturbing if you aren’t used to watching such films. But the very expression of all these acts on screen unsettles you and leaves you feeling utterly disgusted with the character. They also bring out the coldness in the protagonist’s mind, he does not feel a thing while indulging in any of this. In fact this is what he looks forward to, this is his source of excitement. Listening to Beethoven, charging up with the music and going on a violence-spree. And this is what makes gives way to the second half, when Alex is caught for his crimes. He is enrolled in a mind-control therapy to ‘cure’ him of his psychological disease. He is forcefully shown clips of himself and his mates performing all those violent acts for hours at stretch. Initially he enjoys it, but then after a certain point , he can’t take it anymore. It becomes claustrophobic for him to watch all of it. Eventually it becomes a form of excessive torture, all those actions of his. He now associates any kind of violence or sexual perversion with torture and shies away from it. Its an automatic semi-conscious response. He is now cured. Which brings the viewers to the final part. Here, we see that even though Alex is ‘cured’, the society around is still a mess. We see that Alex is now facing torture and his helpless to defend himself. As he is unable to react violently, all he can do is run away from everything. He is helpless, and everything that he did to the society in the first half gets to him at the end. A reversal of sorts! So now, you as a viewer, are left completely unsettled and confused. Do you agree that it was the right form of therapy? Or is it just immoral and non-human to force-control somebody’s mind leaving him exposed to the bad elements of society?

I’d love to write more about my thoughts on the film, it was really that fascinating. Kubrick’s other movies like ‘2001: A Space Oddyssey’, ‘Full Metal Jacket’ and ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ are all amazingly deep too! ‘2001’ explores the evolution of humanity right from apes to the space-man(the so called perfect form of man). It explores the issue of Artificial Intelligence and how man is really an imperfect psychological being, the conflicting issue of violence leading to civilization , before as well as now. And a lot more. ‘Full Metal Jacket’ takes a look at the psychological aspects of violence and war by centering on the Vietnam War. ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ takes a look at our primal sexual desires, a completely esoteric topic!

All these films are wonderful! I would love watching these again and again, because on every viewing you take away something unique from it. A wider perspective. Such films are sometimes hard to watch and interpret in a single sitting. They demand complete viewing attention. And the more attentive and absorbed you are, the more details you’ll pickup. There’s literally no end to exploring Kubrick’s films, you can go on and on. A lot of movies I like lie in this category. They are usually ‘heavy’ viewings. You can’t enjoy and understand them if you wanna watch them casually on a Saturday night with a couple of friends over. You have to be eager to work your brain and explore everything in detail . A lot of people , in general tend to avoid such movies. They say they hate working their brain over a movie. All I can say to them is that they are missing out on a lot. Instead of watching that stupid 2 hour action flick, which has been done a million times before, it is far more rewarding to work your brain over some intellectually-stimulating film.

But its not like I just like ‘hard viewings’. I like ‘light’ films too. Those that are subtle and easier to watch and comprehend. ‘Lost in Translation’ and ‘Before Sunrise/Sunset Series’ is a good example. Even though I used to get extremely bored watching romantic films(just like the brain-dead action flicks) I liked these. They are unique in the sense , they explore different themes related to romance. They are shot beautifully, and the dialog is engaging. These kinda films often fall in the ‘indie’ genre. I’m increasingly finding this genre, if you can call it that, more and more interesting. These are the perfect movies to watch on days when you’re really overworked and exhausted, or you’re in a mood to just watch something light. They don’t offer deep insights and incomprehensible theories, but they reveal a side of things you haven’t seen before or maybe showcase the life you’ll never live. Something different, something sensible. They feed your curiosity.

Movies offer freedom. They allow us to jump in and be a part of someone or something completely different from ourselves. Our lives are limited, and there’s only so much you can do in one. And all of us during some point have the desire to be someone different, if only for a limited amount of time, and experience things we just cannot do in our real personal lives. In my opinion, movies offer that perfect escape that allows us to indulge in our imaginations and fantasies. At other times, they offer us new perspectives about our own way of life which we can duly imbibe. Maybe, my intense obsession with movies comes from the fact that I’ve got too many different personas inside me and all of them want to be awake at some point in time. Ultimately they provide a perfect escape!

Background Information ( Feel free to skip this if you want to dive right into the technical details) :

This semester we have a ‘Web Technologies’ course that introduces quite a few of the web languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript , PHP, etc at a cursory level. We have theory as well as practical credits for the course . For the practicals we have some basic assignments related to each of these. So for the past few days I’ve been exploring PHP and have been making small toy programs to get a feel for the language. After a few of such exercises however I began to get really bored of these seemingly mundane examples. It started to feel pointless, writing code just for the sake of it. So decided to give it a break, for a day or 2. I had to do something else to stop feeling so damn bored! I solved a few CodeForces problems, and checked out a couple of new algorithms. And then I explored some non-coding stuff.

I love movies. Whenever I have a lot of time on my hands, I’ll often spend it watching films. And we have our PLs on right now (during which we are supposed to study for the upcoming term-ends) . So its hardly surprising that I spent quite a lot of my time in the past week checking out some nice flicks that included ‘Her’, and a few Kubric films. Maybe I’ll blog about them sometime soon, all of them were definitely worth talking about.

Anyway, you’d be wondering how any of this even remotely relates to a Facebook API tutorial. Yeah, I’ll get there now. Today morning , I happened to come up with an idea for a Facebook application (Maybe my mind was sub-consciously mixing all of this up in the meantime to produce something substantiative). It would basically show you how your movie tastes stack up against your friends, who your best matches are in terms of intellectual tastes in movies, a similarity parameter between any set of persons, recommendations to like minded people and statistics related to all of this. And this could be extended to music, books, places and a whole lot of other stuff! It seemed like a really fun idea. So I set out to discover the Facebook API and learn it all!

I had to spend more than four hours for getting a simple code using this SDK to work. And help mostly came from sources other than Facebook. So the documentation for the API is really really lacking, especially if you’re a first-time user. I hope this tutorial would help people in my position to avoid those frustrating Google searches for why things aren’t working as they’re supposed to!

–> On line 41 we are initialising our app. You need to replace the APPID and SECRET with your respective app codes , we’ll get there in a minute.

–> On line 44 we are describing our re-direct URL, the place where the user must be re-dircted after a successful Facebook Login. This is the website we will be creating on Heroku.

–> Lines 47-54 describe the Permissions array. To use any of the API features to extract user data off Facebook we need to have the appropriate Permissions to do so . So in our basic app we will ask the user for these permissions. There is a lot more on this and you can read the official Permissions documentation here.

–> On line 57 we invoke the session function.

–> On line 66 we check if a session has been successfully created and get on to using the actual API.

–> On line 74 we print the object obtained by the ‘/me’ query, and on line 74 we print the object obtained by the ‘me/friends’ query, which gives us the names of all our friends who are using this app.

–> Line 82 describes the part where we haven’t logged in yet and the sessions hasn’t been created. So it gives a Login option.

–> Composer is basically a php-dependency manager than sorts out all the required libraries and dependencies for the project. Check out the link for installation details. You do not need it on your local machine , and Heroku already has it installed. So you don’t need to worry about this.

Here we are done with the coding part. We need to take care of the Facebook App setup and the Heroku setup.

It’s the election season here in India. A few states have already voted and the others would be voting soon. For the past few months there has been a heavy political atmosphere around! It’d be hard to find a news story which isn’t centered on politics. Obviously this is a good thing , with people getting enough information about the various political parties and their agendas, they can make an all round decision about whom they should vote for. And then, who can deny the so called “Modi wave” ?! Most of the hype around politics and elections has been centered on Modi. If you happen to watch a debate on some news channel, chances are, the topic is Modi-centric. The PR team of BJP/Modi has indeed done a really good job of projecting him as India’s savior,a person who will tackle all persistent issues like economic development, bureaucratic/political corruption and the likes.

I really haven’t been that into the issue of politics. Sure , I’m aware of most of the things happening around , because I read the newspapers and articles/opinions on the internet. But I don’t staunchly support any political organization/personality, because I haven’t really pinned my hopes on any of them. A few months back, during the India Against Corruption campaign, I did feel good about the issues being raised . When AAP was formed , it did signify some hope. The party seemed to be successful in shifting people’s attention to the fundamental issues and signaled a new form of politics, a clean one. Similar sentiments were probably being echoed in a lot of people’s minds(especially urban youth?) and this was confirmed when AAP had a surprising victory at the Delhi state elections. But then, the events after that, when Kejriwal was in power were really disappointing right up till he resigned , and all that drama in between.

So yeah, that’s that. I’ve been a passive observer of the political scene, without really being active in anything. And this is the first time, I’m voicing my opinion on anything political. I never really felt a strong urge to voice it, because there are so many other issues in life (coding , academics , college being on the top of the list) that have a higher priority for me.

So anyway, yesterday I happened to watch the debate, ‘We The People’ on NDTV. It was about the communal politics of the BJP/Modi, the sensitive history behind Modi , the threat to secularism and various such issues. Half of the panelists were of the opinion that the violent past should be forgotten and the country must move on, and concentrate on more real issues like development. And the other half felt that a person, like Modi, with such right-wing views and a bloody past, was a threat to the country and the democratic ideals upon which it is based. You cannot just forget the deaths and the massacre of so many people that happened when this man was in power in Gujurat, and focus on development. The development factor itself has been controversial, with a lot of people claiming that Modi hasn’t been extraordinary at that. Other states like Maharashtra have seen similar or better development. But the development issue was secondary yesterday, it was mostly about secularism/communal-ism. The major points were that , Modi in power, would mean heightened censorship , less freedom of thought, and especially no protection of the minority (Muslims) against communal forces. And is it morally right for us to elect a man as PM, when he has been involved in such a carnage?

The points raised were important and they needed to be thought upon. So yesterday , after the show, I decided to look up the 2002 Godhra violence in more detail and fill in gaps in my knowledge about the event. One of the panelists in yesterday’s debate was Nandita Das, a renowned actress and social activist. She has directed a film ‘Firaaq’ , set a month after the violent event. I saw it on Youtube , and saw another documentary titled ‘Final Solution‘ examining in detail the atrocities committed during the riots, and the factors behind it. I read a few articles on various websites too. I also read up about the origins of RSS ( Modi was in the RSS before joining the BJP) and all of this led me in succession to reading about Gandhiji’s death and the assassin’s views on why he did it. Here is a detailed article , which are actually Godse’s actual court transcripts explaining his philosophy and the motives behind the action. Godse himself was an RSS member, and a strong crusader for the Hindu cause.

According to what I’ve read, hear is what I’ve gauged from all of this. I urge everyone to look up this matter, as a lot of information is available on the web. Quite a lot of it seems biased, and there’s really no shade of black and white here. There is no good/bad side . Its just dirty politics played on the issues of religion by everyone involved. Reading second hand accounts about everything, there is a possibility that my views too are unintentionally biased. So obviously, don’t agree to everything that I’ve said, think for yourself.

The main issue that started all of this, was the Godhra train burning . This was a train returning from Ayodhya(the site of the Ram temple/Babri Masjid conflict), with most of the travelers being Hindu pilgrims. This led to widespread outrage and sparked communal feelings. The RSS , VHP, BJP and other saffron parties claimed that this was an attack by the Muslims on the Hindu religion(the train had a lot of RSS members inside) and called for avenging the lives of the people that died. This was the start of the horrible carnage that killed thousands of people(most of them Muslim, 790 is the official figure). The carnage went on for weeks, and it is believed that the government(Modi was the CM of Gujurat during this event) didn’t do enough to stop it. A lot of people rather say that the administrative machinery was an active part of this, and actually helped the rioters. There was widespread violence, rape, grave crimes(butchering of bodies in inhumane ways) committed, by both sides. One side did something , the other retaliated. But Hindu’s being the majority in Gujurat, the minorities suffered more. There is one incident about the killing of Congress MP, Ehsan Jafri . It happened in an area called the Gulbarg society, which was mostly filled with Muslim population . A large mob gathered here with swords, knives, petrol cans and other weapons to kill everyone present here. The community, scared of the happenings, gathered at the MP’s house thinking that his house would be spared as he’d have contacts in the higher departments. Jafri made several calls to various people , including Modi, and top Congress leaders but to no avail. No one could do anything, and no help arrived from the police(in-spite of police assurances earlier that day). The whole area was burned, men killed and woman raped in horrifying ways. Jafri was taken outside the house, and hacked to death by the mob. And this is just one incident, out of the thousands.

Yes, maybe this man wasn’t clean and sacred. Maybe , I’m just looking at one side of the story and there’s more to it. But reading all these events just scares you! Such uncontrolled violence is just unthinkable by anyone, be it of any religion. And its the government’s responsibility to stop such misshapennings , right after they originate and help contain the violence before it erupts and the mob mentality spreads all over!

To this day, it has not been found , who actually sparked the fires on the train. There have been various committee’s examining and inquiring it and all of them have given different verdicts. Many experts too have studied the incident, and views have been conflicting. Some believe , it was the saffron elements themselves(RSS/VHP/BJP) who burned the train to create the entire issue. Some say , it was the Muslims who did it. And some say , the train fire was an accident caused by no one in particular. There have been numerous arrests made, but no straight conclusions.

Whatever caused the fire, the Hindu parties claimed it was the Muslims, and added oil to the flames of the extremely sensitive issue. It was a perfect issue to communalise and it formed the BJP’s election campaign(or it probably was based on it from the start, and this just helped strengthen it)! The BJP , which includes the RSS/VHP/Bajrang Dal and other saffron parties, have Hinduism as their main agenda. Their main responsibility is to strengthen the Hindu voice, and prevent its downfall. To spread Hinduism as far as possible. If anyone tries to harm the Hindu religion in anyway possible, they will face harmful repercussions. There’s a lot more to this philosophy and I don’t claim to know the least bit of it. And on the outset, there’s no reason to condemn these principles . Some people love their religion and are willing to to support such organizations, some are religious but don’t support them and some don’t follow the concept of religion(or rather religion-exploitation) . You are in a democracy and you’re allowed to have your own opinion. But that doesn’t mean you start killing in the name of religion! Maybe, such similar crimes have been committed by Muslims on Hindus and hence the retaliation. And after reading about pre-independence years, I certainly think such incidents have happened in large numbers with Muslim perpetrators. That was the reason why right-wing nationalist leaders created organization like the RSS, to protect Hindu interests. Muslim appeasement(Gandhiji agreeing to the partition of India), inspite of violence and atrocities by Muslims, was the major reason why there was hate against Gandhiji and is the reason why he was shot. The politics of Gandhiji, his principles, and his place in the Indian freedom struggle is a huge debatable issue in itself , that I cannot talk about here. But it is closely related to the formation of Saffron organizations, and the Hindi-Muslim dispute. It was all started then, by the divide-and-rule policy of the British, that was just fodder for malevolent forces inside both communities to feed on. Right wing organizations like RSS are an answer to the violence of the extremist Muslim elements. Its all a vicious cycle, one starts an issue on communal grounds, the other retaliates in a harsher way and the vicious cycle goes on. This is probably the major issue that has been haunting India after independence . The exploitation of religion! The pre-independence riots, formation of Pakistan, the 1992 Ayodhya(Babri Masjid demolition) riots, the Mumbai bomb blasts, the Gujurat riots, and so many of the other events in between these and so many events after these! The issue is still very ripe and does get exploited again and again. The recent UP Muzaffarnagar riots is again, a different form of the same fundamental issues! Indian politics is dirty, its not just BJP, its the other parties too.

What is pathetic in these clashes is that its usually the innocents who have to suffer. People who have no involvement in anything! Because of the wrongdoings of a few, the whole community has got to suffer. This is one of the main reasons why I dislike religion. Religion has probably caused more violence than any other issue in the world. Rather religion exploitation, or whatever. People blindly follow their faith, and are taught to not question anything. No rational reasoning, whatsoever. With people so devout about anything religious, its so easy to manipulate religious sentiments! That is what these organizations exploit! The weak mindedness(or close mindedness) of the individuals who aren’t capable of reasoning for themselves the effects of the actions that they’re performing! Brainwashing is the word probably. Religion practiced in a clean way isn’t a least bit harmful, but its too easy to exploit religion and cause hatred and enmity among the religions.

And this is what most people fear/dislike the most about the BJP, and Narendra Modi. What if such an event occurs again ? What if the people who are supposed to protect the nation, stand still and watch the fire spread over the nation? Worst, what if they themselves organize and spread it? Will the innocent un-involved minorities have to face all that that has happened before, again, now on a wider scale ? Or, have the BJP and Modi changed all their fundamental philosophies for the better of the nation?

Modi , in spite of being cleared by the Supreme Court of India, still has a lot of evidence against him. Even if one were to believe Modi is not guilty, maybe he could’ve done a lot more for stopping the riots! It can be seen that he still isn’t as accepting of the minorities, and they still fear him. Modi , being raised in the RSS, also has strong opinions of good/bad and of morality/immorality . Will his government, including the leaders from VHP/RSS , who will surely be given some posts , be tolerant of things that are different from their traditions/values? I don’t want to be scared in the future that I’ve written out my opinions in a blog post that looks at violence / (or other sensitive issues) in a neutral light, and that criticizes some points which I don’t agree with. That is why freedom of speech matters! I want to express such thoughts when I feel like, in the future too. Be it about anything. I don’t want alcohol to be banned all over India. People must be able to choose, in which things they want to indulge in, and they can choose for themselves as rational thinking adults.

If all such issues are tackled by Modi in a positive way, I’d surely support him. Being a strong personality, he would have the ability to bring order in the country about things like corruption. Development would also be addressed, if his Gujurat model is as successful as the BJP claims it to be. As for me, I personally do not think that he’s the messiah people make him to be. People have just pinned too many of their hopes on him. Communal claims aside, he seems to be a strong leader, and I’d of course be happy if he does all things right. But, are others all around me, thinking about all these things before voting for Modi ? Or are they just blindly following the wave around and unquestioningly casting their vote? Absence of another strong candidate to vote for is another issue which makes things complicated! We’d choose the lesser of the evils probably.

I just hope things stay stable and calm , whoever is in power. As for me, I doubt my life is going to be any different a year later!

I have just finished copying the last flowchart of a program for my Programming Lab Journal. Its the assignment submission time in our college, the time during which we waste about 3 or 4 days gathering data from classmates, photocopying their journals, and then spend hours moving our pens and pencils on paper illogically writing words and drawing patterns like a brain dead zombie. Its an exercise in futility. Its dull and stupid. Its pathetic enough to be added to the list of reasons that make me feel sad for joining this college. The music helps kill some of the boredom. The teachers would also share the same feelings while correcting them, most of them just ticking through pages and signing at the end of an assignment. Which brings me to the question, why is all this even happening? Its a complete waste of time, and it definitely does not help the student actually learn anything, and the teachers know that. But, tradition demands it, and it will continue. The only beneficiary I can see here is the guy running the printout/Xerox shop. I was so bored yesterday, that I actually had a conspiracy theory that there was some kind of a deal between the University and the local Xerox guys!

I wish the college would rather give us good assignment problems at the end of each week after the practical sessions , and set a deadline, so that the students would actually “think” on their own and come up with solutions rather than just refer to a textbook and copy all the theory for that assignment. Obviously, this isn’t going to happen, perhaps for various reasons which I don’t really want to express right now .

I had to find a way out of this dull task, so yesterday I decided to take a break and complete Breaking Bad. I’d completed Season 5 Part 1 the week before, so there were only 7 or 8 episodes more to watch as this was the last season. And I saw them all yesterday. The show is amazingly addictive. Once you start watching, you can’t stop. I’ve few of these marathons, so I’ve completed the whole show in an amazingly few number of sessions!

Breaking Badis an amazing show. Its unique,for it is dark and completely unpredictable! It does not paint a rosy picture for any character in the show. That is one of the main factors that makes it special. The protagonist goes from being this weak, timid chemistry teacher to this bad-ass, immoral and ruthless meth cook and then again into a caring, loving and rightful guy! The show does not define what is good, and what is bad. It is upto you to decide that. And most of the decisions here cannot be defined by those 2 words, there’s a lot more to it. If you compare the first few episodes and the last few ones(or better, the first few episodes of the last season), they are completely out of sync! You wouldn’t believe they are the same characters, doing whatever they are doing! Finally, according to me, Breaking Bad was about the love Walt had for his family. He wanted his family to have the best possible life , and during the whole show his end motives were clear. ‘Its all for the family.’ This goes on blinding Walt from everything else, and drags him on to the other side of morality! He becomes ruthless, violent, careless about everyone and everything apart from his family . He justifies every wrong move and goes further into the void. And in the end, all the dirt he has piled up finally comes down on him. You jump from these different phases as the show progresses: feeling sorry for Walt, enjoying his descent into the dark, feeling great at him killing the bad guys, realizing his bent vision of morality, despising the extreme turn of events he plans, absolutely hating him for destroying things relentlessly which meant a lot to him, becoming greedy and then in the end, again sympathizing with the character after he gets some of his old self back. In the end, you have these mixed feelings of liking and hating Walt, because he has done so many terrible and wrong things, but then he only has good intentions in the end, and this powerful sentence that comes to life in the end, takes back most of the hate off him.

Its all for the family.

The last episode is somewhat unlike the series though, it is not as dark as the series and somewhat predictable. It treads away from the dark path which you’ve so gotten used to. But maybe I would have not liked the series as much, had Walt died as a bad guy. The last episode reiterates the show’s initial moral ground, which makes it a kinda happy end. A great show, and definitely the best among the ones I’ve seen. Its got drama, emotions, violence and comedy! It is absolutely hilarious at times, especially Saul Goodman and Jesse Pinkman. Those one liners from Saul😀 . ‘Better Call Saul’ is going to be fun to watch😛 Gus was one awesome bad guy! I felt bad for Hank and Mike! Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Saul Goodman and Anna Gunn each surely deserve a few awards for their brilliant acting! And obviously, Vince Gilligan. What a show he’s created!

As Gilligan himself puts it,

In an interview with The New York Times, creator Vince Gilligan said the larger lesson of the series is that “actions have consequences”.He elaborated on the show’s philosophy:

If religion is a reaction of man, and nothing more, it seems to me that it represents a human desire for wrongdoers to be punished. I hate the idea of Idi Amin living in Saudi Arabia for the last 25 years of his life. That galls me to no end. I feel some sort of need for Biblical atonement, or justice, or something. I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen. My girlfriend says this great thing that’s become my philosophy as well. ‘I want to believe there’s a heaven. But I can’t not believe there’s a hell.

Now I’ll be waiting impatiently for the next seasons of Game of Thrones, and House of Cards. And right now sadly I’m going to need to get back and complete a few more assignments.

Its been about 2 months since I finished my driving lessons, and I’ve been driving occasionally ever since. So now, I feel quite comfortable driving a car. But ever since my first ride, there has always been this event which puzzles me: Parking the car back into my narrow society parking!

Actually my parking is a rectangular spot squeezed tightly in between obstructions, and this makes it quite hard to get into. So I always need to go a little past the spot, and then reverse the car back into the parking! This figure explains the process(I hope it does explain the point I’m making😐 )

Reversing in!

The society entrance is towards the right, the black outline indicates the road and the blue arrows indicate the direction of movement of the car. So as drawn, I enter from the right, go ahead till the darkened blue dot and then reverse the car into the parking(which is the lower rectangular block) . The blue outline traces the movement of the rear wheels as the car goes back.

Yeah, none of the above seems confusing, right? It isn’t. What I’m puzzled about is, whenever I try to get the car front first into the parking, it just doesn’t fit in. If it does, you need to do a lot of reversing in between. It happens after 5 6 reverse attempts., and its just too tedious. Reversing is a bit tedious, but very manageable as compared to the other alternative.

But while removing the car out of the parking the next time I drive it, it doesn’t take too many efforts. And that is exactly what puzzles me! If If I can get the car out of the parking perfectly, why can’t I get it in perfectly using the same path? Why do I always have to do a reverse-park?

Path for going out!

The blue outline now indicates the direction of movement of the front wheels. The black arrow explains my puzzle graphically, if going out is possible why isn’t going in plausible? Notice that I’ve written ‘indicates direction of movement of wheels’ above and avoided ‘indicates direction of movement of car’. Why have I done this? You’ll know ahead. If you’re able to answer that you will know the explanation to this puzzle!

Today being a Sunday and the only free day of the week (only people from PICT will know the insane/absurd attendance requirements here) I had lots of free time. So after having breakfast and spending an hour reading the newspaper, I was browsing Quora. It always helps me pass time and not feel guilty about it. You can always console yourself by saying “These hours I spent browsing Quora, they wern’t a waste of time. I learned loads of things!”(Is that true? Idk. :s) As I was navigating through the content, I stumbled upon this amazing answer on Quora. And thus the puzzle had again come back to life! I decided that I had to find the reason today. So after spending hours reading about differentials, steering, Steering Geometry and a lot more, I finally managed to decrypt the puzzle😀

I’ll try to explain it in the simplest way possible. Try to read that Quora link above, the animation in that answer reveals a lot of things. Here is the crux of everything I read today :

All 4 wheels of the car rotate at different speeds and at different angles while turning

Think on this for a while. Visualize navigating a turn. The inner wheels navigate a shorter path than the outer wheels.

This means that the inner wheels move at a slower speed than the outer ones, as in the same time they need to cover a shorter distance. This is the reason we have the differential on the axle of the wheels! The main purpose of the differential is to distribute the engine torque suitably so as to move the outer wheel at a faster rate as compared to the inner one!

What is surprising though is that the front wheels and the rear wheels do not follow the same path on turns! And this is the reason why I’ve used ‘denotes direction of movement of wheels’ above. Because the movement of the car is not important, the paths of the rear and front wheels is important!

This is the animation that cleared things for me:

Moving in a circle!

You can observe that the radius of the circlular ring of the front wheels will always be bigger than that of the rear wheels!

Which brings us to the answer of the puzzle:

The parking Puzzle decoded

In the above figure, I’ve drawn the movement of the car as it moves out of the parking. The 4 dark dots denote the 4 wheels, and the dotted rectangle is the outline of the car. The initial position of the car is inside the lower rectangular block which is the parking. As I just mentioned above, the front and rear wheels travel different circles. The blue ring is the extended path of the rear wheels and the black ring is the extended path of the front wheels. The point ‘O’ denotes the center of that circular turn. It is visible from the diagram that the black ring is bigger in area than the blue ring.

Observe the second dotted position of the car. This is where the car will move out of its prior circular path and will be steered to the left , indicated by the 2nd darkened arrow.

Now, if we wanted to drive in through the same path, we would need to somehow place the front wheels on the black ring and rear wheels on the blue ring! But while coming into the society it will be difficult to find such a spot which places the wheels on the appropriate rings. Diagrammatically, it seems possible that such a spot exists just before entering the parking. But its hard to say where exactly it lies, as the figure is a rough free-hand approximation. Even if it’s there, finding it would be really hard when actually driving! This basically means that the path for going in and out is not symmetric as the circles have to match perfectly for that! Which is the reason why reverse-parking is way less tedious!

I don’t know if I’ve managed to explain things properly, that’s the best I could come up with. It feels good to analyze this successfully and finally know the reason! It was not at all intuitive!

Last week, I officially cleared my first year of engineering with a distinction. Seeing the incoming FE batch in college, we knew our results were near. Not that I was waiting eagerly for them, I just needed an assurance that I’ve cleared all my semester 2 subjects. I was especially fearful of my Electronics(BXE) marks, for which I had literally borrowed the book from a senior 3 or 4 days before the exam, and my Basic Mechanical Engineering(BME) marks. I just hated BME, it was way too theoretical apart from the unit on Thermodynamics. Types of levers, pulleys, cranks and what not! It was like Chemistry was back to trouble me, just in a different form. All you needed to do was to rote the local text book and you’re done(No offense to the guys who liked BME , but the first few units were just rote. Actually that can be generalized for nearly all Pune University subjects).

And my semester was further worsened by the fact that I spent the last 1 and a half month preparing for BITSAT. Yeah, I thought I would crack BITSAT in under a month. I managed to gather this whole lot of motivation, and I got all my JEE preparation books out. All those fat dreaded books. Looking back, its seriously an achievement that I even managed to work my ass off seriously for a month. The motivation actually came after I cleared the JEE Mains(yeah I’d enrolled for a whole lot of exams) without studying anything! It was quite motivational, that moment when I saw I’d cleared the exam. But frankly it was too late, just a month before BITSAT. Even then, I decided to give it a go. I seriously solved almost 60-70% of AIEEE topic-wise past year problems, read loads of topics from HCV 1,2. Made notes of about 7 or 8 chemistry topics. I’d never made these many chem notes last year. All this gave me some hope. A faint hope that I might just clear BITSAT. After nearly a year of no contact with those topics and books, I managed to cover quite a lot in this time frame. I feel pretty good about it actually. Maybe someday it could help motivate me.

Anyway, during my university exam, I had to go to Goa as I got BITS Goa as my BITSAT center. Eventually , I managed to score a few more marks at BITSAT than last year(near about 250) and that got me nowhere. I was quite disappointed, but then I avoided feeling depressed by being happy about scoring better than last year in so less time. I have no idea(not exactly, but lets ignore chemistry for now) how I managed to royally screw up last year’s BITSAT so much, that I managed to beat that score with just 1 month of preparation. So anyway, the conclusion: I probably just wasted these one and a half months. I don’t say wasted because I feel bad about not studying for my university. That wouldn’t have happened anyway. But I did lose 2 months which I would have better used for coding. Before preparation of BITSAT, it was coding , the whole time. Coding is way too addictive.

So after reading that description, you must have got an idea as to why I dreaded semester 2 subjects like those two I mentioned. Memory_based_subjects + No_study == Horrible_Combo. So eagerly opening up the .pdf document from the web, I quickly found myself in the ‘ALL CLEAR’ list. That was a HUGE relief! Later we got our marks, BXE I scored 65/100 and BME 44/100. I passed BME with a margin of 4 marks . And I’d fared pretty good in the other subjects , so I did manage a 70% average of both semesters. Nothing great, but considering the circumstances, I’m way too happy. Its making me feel less bad about wasting those 2 months. I would probably have scored 80%(if I’d studied, that is). Frankly I don’t really think a 70 or 80 does a difference, you get a distinction anyway!

Looking back at the year, it went pretty good actually. I got introduced to programming exactly a year back, and I’m quite passionate about it. Apart from college hours, which were sometimes horrible due to the compulsory attendance thing , the first year seemed pretty chilled out. The difficulty of the exams was not at all hard. Managing a distinction studying a week before exams is easily manageable(Provided your 11th 12th concepts are clear). And you can do this even after having fun. I did things that I hadn’t done till now( were they illegal? Lets not get into that) . A lot of new experiences.

Oh, and I managed to do a lot of coding. A lot! A year back I did not know even a single syntax of C or C++ or Java or any programming language other than VB taught in school before the 10th grade. And today, I’m probably better than most, if not all students in my department. A strong passion really helps big time. You can go hours doing a thing without even realizing how time has passed. You can forget food, television, mobile , even sleep. And practice makes you better, the more you do it. So its not that you need some kind of genius to get awesome at coding, you just need practice and passion. You get better eventually.

So in a way, the lower difficulty of FE actually helped a lot. You have an opportunity to use all of that free time for things that you’re gonna learn ahead!(or you could use ALL of that time to chill out, smoke up, party, watch movies and/or sitcoms all day,etc. its your choice and you’re gonna face the consequences someday! I say ALL in bold because I used some of my time for some of those things too. Maybe 10% in quantitative terms. But most of that free time was put to good use. ) The current programming subjects in college feel really easy. Where people have difficulty understanding a simple syntax in class, I manage to dry run the entire program in my mind. Actually , more than 95% of my batch mates struggle with programming. 60 – 70 % have an extremely hard time. The main reason, in my opinion for this is their lack of passion in the field itself. And without giving effort, you just cannot program well. And to give effort, you need to concentrate a lot. Programming is not something you can learn by rote. Its a whole lot like mathematics,there are just a few rules and its all about arranging and manipulating those rules according to the situation. That’s what I love about Computer Science, its pure logic. You either understand it, or you don’t. Learning huge chunks of code would just not help. The codes are way too huge and too many.

And what do I have to say about my college? Way too strict, even more than my school. Compulsory attendance is just a stupid concept that does no good whatsoever. Half of the teachers cannot teach. In the second year, more than half of the teachers cannot teach. University of Pune exams are way too shitty. Local books are shitty too, but they get full retard during the Second Year. Never go full retard. I’m yet to face my first exam in the second year, but I’m sincerely hoping that the professors don’t expect the answers from the local books. I might just fail then. Most students are not interested about their field. Most don’t care about things being taught. Few are quite interested and they get along well. Our Fundamentals of Data Structures professor is quite awesome. Our Discrete Structures prof. is also good. I think we deserve more of such faculty. But 80%+ of the class doesn’t take interest even in these lectures, so sometimes I feel I’m at the wrong place. I really hope more passionate people take CS/IT in the coming years at PICT.

So what do I plan to do ahead, by the end of this year? Loads of things. Actually I’ve barely scratched the surface of this field. I’m assuming passionate people from IIIT/IIT or other premier institutions who’ve had exposure to programming in their 11th/12th , must be way ahead. In my college itself there are a couple of immediate seniors who are way more experienced. That actually helps, you get a bit of motivation to do more! The things I plan to do before I write a similar post next year:

Complete a couple of courses on Coursera. I’m currently in my fourth week on the Stanford Course “Introduction to Algorithms”. I really want to complete this course with a distinction grade.

Learn more of C. Be familiar with every chapter of Kernighan and Ritchie C Programming Book. Get exposed and acquainted with all major algorithms.

Contribute to open source projects that use C by the end of this year. This kinda leads to the next point.

Try getting into Google Summer Of Code ’14. This is like one of the major targets.

Learn Python in detail.

Get back to Competitive Programming. Prepare for ACM ICPC ’14. I need to find time for this, at the moment I’m way too occupied.

Know Linux in detail.

This is somewhat optional, score a distinction in the second year exams.

Learn front-end + back-end web development.

Try finding my main area of interest(for further studies and or research/job opportunities possibly?)

Complete season 3, 4, 5, 6 of Mad Men. Mad Men is way way way too awesome. Start Season 1 of Breaking Bad.

If there’s any time left, learn to play the guitar.

That list is way too long , and I hope I manage at least 10 of those things. I’ll maybe check this blog post often to keep a tab on these. And to anyone reading this, who’s from a Tier-2 university(read local college) , please stop depending on the local books/notes and study the reference books properly. Else you’re not gonna remember any of the learnt stuff after your sem end exams!

Enough of rant about the past year. All in all, I’m pretty satisfied with 2012-13. Lets hope I’m even more satisfied with 2013-14.

Blogs I Follow

Currently in my third year of engineering(Information Technology) , I'm studying in PICT, Pune. My keen topics of interest are computer programming, maths, philosophy, economics , physics and a lot more. Music, movies and the internet are 3 things I cannot live without. I love travelling and hiking!